In the Life
by lovecatcadillac
Summary: Betty realises what she's made of, and who she really is. Set around 1932-1933.


Rating: For sexual references, some colourful language and a scene involving a gashed leg in need of stitches.

Warnings: Trigger warnings for blood, injuries, homophobia. This fic discusses – but does not actually feature – sexual abuse. Please let me know if I should add any more.

Notes: My take on Betty's backstory, and a way she might have come to terms with her sexuality. The title is 1930s underground slang for someone who is openly gay.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Michael Maclennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.

The only other people in the doctor's waiting room are an elderly man coughing into a voluminous handkerchief, and a housewife with a small girl and a toddler. The housewife catches Betty's eye and smiles. She's quite pretty, with strawberry blonde hair and delicate freckles. Betty makes an awkward attempt at returning the smile before chastising herself. She didn't come all this way to stare at pretty women. Pretty _married_ women are especially off-limits, but their numbers seem to be increasing by the year.

Betty has used her day off from work to travel into town under the pretence of visiting her Great-Aunt Evelyn. Of course, she'll stop in on Great-Aunt Evelyn on her way back. She's aware of her duties to her family, but she's also well aware that Great-Aunt Evelyn will probably spend the entire time calling her Lillie, which is the name of Betty's cousin who died of scarlet fever in 1925. Needless to say, taking tea with Great-Aunt Evelyn is not the real reason Betty has travelled several hours out of her way.

A door opens and a Brylcreemed head appears. "Miss Betty Munro?" calls Dr George.

Betty gets to her feet, smoothing out her skirts, and smiles at him. She knows the smile is pained at best, but at least that way, the pretty young housewife will think she's only suffering from indigestion.

_Well, here goes,_ she thinks. She wishes she could speak to a female doctor, but that's a fanciful notion. There are no female doctors anywhere near here. She wonders about asking to talk with a nurse, the receptionist, anyone but Dr George with his spidery fingers and his wire-rimmed glasses slicing his eyes in two. It's too late for reservations now. She's here, she's lied and schemed in order to be here, so she's damn well going to use this golden opportunity.

She steps into his office, staring at the diplomas mounted on the wall, the books lined up on shelves. "Nice to meet you, sir," she says, wringing his hand. Betty can see him noting her firm handshake. It's one of the first things people notice about her, the thing that puts them on their guard. Normally, she doesn't mind. She likes the tiny amount of power it affords her, having an unusually strong handshake for a young woman. Today, she's afraid of doing anything that appears too mannish. It's why she's wearing this sweetpea dress, freshly ironed and crackling with starch, and the earrings she wore for her cousin Mavis' wedding last summer.

"Please sit down, Miss Munro," he says graciously, indicating a chair.

The nameplate on his desk reads Dr Reginald George. Betty always feels sorry for people whose surnames sound like first names. She's proud of having a good strong surname like McRae. Still, with a fancy surgery like this, and times being what they are, Dr George can't exactly be hurting for patients. Some people can carry it off, having two first names. Betty used to know - and have a bit of a crush on - a girl called Shirley Rose. It really suited her.

Dr George notices her eyeing the nameplate, and raises his eyebrows slightly. "I have a brother named George," Betty says.

He smiles, apparently used to people trying to stall him. "What can I do for you today, Miss Munro?"

No point in beating around the bush. "I'm here because I heard you help people with - sex problems."

His eyes flicker to her clasped hands, looking for a ring, but of course she's not wearing one. He scans the form on his desk, humming softly. Betty's given a false surname and address, but she was truthful about her marital status.

"Are you in need of information, or counselling?"

"Both," says Betty. Her nerve fails her, and she blathers, "I - see, the problem is, I - the thing is..."

"Take a deep breath," suggests Dr George. "I understand these things can be difficult for a young lady to discuss, even with her doctor."

Betty exhales and inhales. "I guess the thing is that I ... like women." It's not the first time she's said it aloud, but it always feels so funny. She can spend a whole day thinking about a girl, imagining all sorts of crazy scenarios in which they're together and they're happy, but whenever people crack jokes about queers, it always takes her a second to realise that they are, essentially, joking about her.

Dr George shows little reaction. "And how do you like them?"

Betty stares at him. Would she really be here, asking about sex problems, if she liked women purely as friends? "I like women the way I should like men."

"How long have you had these feelings?"

"Ever since I can remember."

"Have you acted on your desires?"

Betty shrugs oh-so-casually. "I've kissed women before." She doesn't fancy telling him that she's done a lot more than kiss. Dr George reminds her of Miss March, her elementary school teacher, who once caned her four times in one week for climbing the side of the schoolhouse. She has a mad mental image of telling Miss March exactly _where_ she's kissed a woman, and bites back a laugh. Why shouldn't she laugh? It beats crying any day.

_... Jesus Christ, what am I doing?_ Betty thinks with a jerk. She can't sit here smirking like a disobedient schoolgirl, reminiscing fondly about the things she's done, the things she's had done to her. For God's sake, that's why she's here in the first place. She can't think like that. It's not a joke, not a game. This is her life, her health that's hanging in the balance here.

She rearranges her face into a more contrite expression, and speaks honestly. "I don't want to be this way any more, Dr George. I'm going to be twenty on my next birthday and it's still as strong as ever. I guess I'd like to know what my chances are of growing out of it, at this stage."

"Not everyone is able to just grow out of it, Miss Munro. For some people, it's congenital." At Betty's blank expression, he elaborates, "They're sick from the moment they're born, and no amount of medical intervention can change their inclinations. I don't think you're like those people. You're young and strong, and you've sought out medical help, which implies that you want to change. I'm certain that your illness is curable."

"It is?" It was what she was hoping for, deep down (although she's always thought that something so intrinsically part of her would have to be grown out of, not cured). In the lead-up to this appointment, Betty spent days - weeks - preparing herself to hear that it wasn't curable. All these years of worry, of heartache, they can just be cured? Why didn't anyone ever tell her? Why didn't they take her aside and whisper, _"I can see you're a raging bloody queer, but don't worry, you can get pills for that"_?

"Absolutely. There is probably a very simple reason why you've developed this sickness. Everyone can learn to love in a healthy way, provided they take a long, hard look at themselves to puzzle out the reason why." He pushes his glasses up his nose in a decisive gesture. "For example, a lot of young women with your condition were frightened by a man in early childhood, which impacts on their ability to feel naturally about sex."

"Frightened by a man?" repeats Betty sceptically.

"By any male," he concedes. "It's much more common than you would think. A single negative experience in childhood can cause damage that results in, ah, sex problems."

Betty shakes her head. "I don't reckon that's me, doc. My dad's a straight talker, but quiet. I can probably count on one hand the number of times he's raised his voice to me, or my brothers. He spanked me a few times when I was little, but he hasn't had cause to since I was twelve. I've never really been scared of him. I mind him, of course, but it's not like - I don't live in fear of him, or anything." She wracks her brain, trying to think of any other circumstances under which she might have been frightened by a man. Lamely, she continues, "To hear my older brothers tell it, my grandad was pretty fearsome, but he died when I was four. He was pretty ancient when he went, but he'd still whack my brothers if they didn't mind their p's and q's. I don't reckon he took much notice of me. I've got lots of girl cousins, so he had plenty of granddaughters."

"That's very interesting," Dr George says. The second the words leave his mouth, Betty doesn't like the way they sound. "Tell me more about your family situation."

She shifts in her chair. "Um, not much to tell, really. I'm from a farming family. I'm the middle child out of seven, and the only girl. I suppose me having so many brothers probably has something to do with me being the way I am. I always used to play the same games as the boys, the same sports. When money got tight, I'd even wear their hand-me-downs. And, I mean, my brothers obviously date girls, so..."

Dr George stares unrelentingly at her. It is starting to make her feel very uncomfortable. "Go on," he says.

Betty is nonplussed. Go on? What else is there to say? "... Maybe I got the wrong idea, somehow," Betty says finally. "About who I was supposed to take an interest in."

"Perhaps." Dr George looks long and hard at her. She feels profoundly irritated. Why did he make her finish that sentence if that's all he was going to say? Dr George casts an eye over her, taking in her twice-turned dress, her third-hand sweater. "You have quite a close relationship with your brothers, then?"

"Yeah. I roomed with all six of 'em at one stage. That was an experience." She laughs, trying to dispel the tension in the room.

Dr George does not crack a smile. "Tell me, Miss Munro, did your brothers ever undress in front of you?"

Betty blinks. "Our house has three rooms, Doc. You can't share three rooms with eight other people all your life and never see any of 'em naked."

"And you've undressed in front of them?"

"Ye-es," she says uncertainly. "Of course. No sense in being modest when there's six buck naked men sitting around playing cards while they wait for their clothes to dry on laundry day. It's nothing they haven't seen before."

"I see. Do your brothers kiss you?"

Betty is starting to see where he is trying to take the conversation. No, perhaps that's just her sick mind at work. If she's sick enough to want to sleep with girls, she's probably sick enough to read all sorts of sordid meanings into perfectly innocent statements. That has to be it. If he's suggesting what she thinks he is, why that's – just loathsome, and ludicrous, and unthinkable. He can't really be insinuating that...

"We're not really a touchy-feely family," she says firmly, sending him a significant look, trying to communicate without words that he is _not_ to voice what he is thinking if he knows what's good for him.

"Have any of your brothers ever touched you?"

For a moment, she is speechless. "I – what? No!"

"Perhaps your brother George?"

Betty recoils. George McRae is five years younger than Betty. Betty could probably still get him in a headlock if Mom didn't complain that she was too old to be roughhousing with the boys. She's cooked his dinners and washed his clothes and helped him up when he's fallen. He used to bring her interesting rocks he found outdoors. She still has one of them on her windowsill at home, right next to her parents' wedding photo. He would never hurt her. None of her brothers would.

"That's disgusting," she snaps. "You're sick in the head."

"We are not here to discuss me, Miss Munro. We are here to talk about you, and I cannot help you if you're not truthful with me."

Betty glowers at him. The clock ticks on the wall, sounding like a hammer striking an anvil.

"Well, perhaps we can discuss that in time," Dr George says finally. "The crux of the matter is that your sickness is definitely curable."

"How would you cure it?" She hates herself for asking that of him, but her curiosity gets the best of her.

"There are hospitals which offer specialised treatment for sex disorders like yours. You would need to check in for an extended stay, of course."

"Well, whaddya mean, 'extended?'" Betty asks. God help her, she actually wonders how long she could conceivably pretend to be visiting Great-Aunt Evelyn.

"The treatments usually take around six months."

"Six months!"

"Probably less."

"Exactly what the hell am I meant to tell my folks?"

"You're concerned."

"Damn right I'm concerned. 'Mom, Dad, I'm going to a mental asylum so I won't be a pervert any more. See you next year!'"

"They don't need to be told the real reason. Many young women in your position choose to tell their families that they are going for a rest. I've never had a family question this. Women with your disorder tend to be sensitive and highly strung."

For some reason, this offends Betty almost as much as the accusation of incest. She hasn't spent the last almost-twenty years doing all the same jobs as a man _and_ all the jobs that fall to the only girl in a large family, just to be called sensitive and highly strung by a man behind a desk.

Betty sits, utterly flabbergasted, as Dr George retrieves some pamphlets from his desk drawer and spreads them out - facing him, of course. As if she's such a dumb hick that she can't read upside down. Oh, she can read upside down, all right. One of the pamphlets is for the Saskatchewan Hospital for the Insane.

"You're an intelligent young woman, Miss Munro. Surely you can see that, in light of the implications your disorder has for the rest of your life, your health must be prioritised? The time will fly by, I guarantee you. The main thing is to teach you to direct your feelings in a healthy way, and to remove you from the toxic environment that brought on this illness in the first place."

She boils with shame at the thought that someone, somewhere, is under the impression that her brothers have been interfering with her. It doesn't matter that it's the nonexistent Munro family whose name has been tainted. It doesn't matter one bit.

_How dare you?_ she fumes silently. _How dare you say those things about me and my family, just because of where I'm from - just 'cause I'm this way? You don't know a thing about me! You don't give a shit, you just want to find some neat reason for why I like women. I come in here, tell you I grew up on a farm and I want to kiss girls, and your mind jumps to incest? You're the one with the sick mind, not me!_

Betty is suddenly struck by a memory that is so much a part of who she is, that oddly, she can go years without really thinking about it. She was seven years old, home sick from school. She was roused from half-sleep by the sound of her father shouting from outside. "Lizzie!" he yelled. "Lizzie!"

He was calling for his wife; another Elizabeth, and Betty's namesake. "Mom's not home, Dad," Betty had mumbled into her pillow. Massively pregnant with the baby who would be Betty's youngest brother, Mom had left Betty's two-year-old brother in his crib, tucked Betty into bed and caught a ride into town to stock up on provisions for the weeks she would be out of action, following the birth. Dad seemed to have forgotten this. He kept yelling for Lizzie. Eventually, Betty padded out onto the front porch on unsteady legs, shivering in one of her dad's old nightshirts.

Betty's dad was bracing himself against the mailbox. His face was covered with a sheen of sweat. One of his trouser legs, usually medium brown, looked reddish-black. Betty's legs crumpled beneath her and she sat down on the top step with a thump as she realised what had happened.

"Don't just stand there," he called, appealing to her with a hand smeared with red and brown. "Come and help."

Somehow, she had picked herself up and flown down the path. "Daddy," she said in shock, as she reached him. Even back then, she hadn't called him Daddy in years - it was always Dad, because that's what Bill and Joe and Sam said, and she wanted to be like them. "What happened?"

"Gashed my damn leg fixing that fence. Help me inside," he said through gritted teeth. She arranged his arm around her shoulders, but was so weak that she nearly collapsed again the moment he leaned on her. She managed to lock her knees, though, and support him up the garden path.

Betty got them both through the door and stood back as Dad fell heavily onto the sofa, the one with the secret hole she pulled horsehairs out of when she had to be good for visitors. Dad rolled up his trouser leg to inspect the damage.

"Dad, we should fetch a doctor," she croaked, eyes widening in alarm. She swayed and had to support herself against the arm of the sofa, partly because of her pounding head and partly because of the bloody footprint Dad had left on Mom's rag rug. "That's a big cut."

"I'm not havin' some quack ride out here, tell me what I already know, and charge me for the privilege," Dad grunted. "Fetch us a towel so we can stop it bleeding. Then you can boil up some water and drop in a needle and thread."

Head swimming, Betty had brought him the towel and, ten minutes later, the needle and thread. She had watched saucer-eyed as he stitched up the wound. It was disgusting and distressing, but she forced herself to look. She needed to know what to do, in case she ever sliced herself open fixing a fence too.

"You're a good girl, Betty," he told her, after he had broken off the thread and slumped backwards, chest heaving. He beckoned her, and she offered her forehead, which he brushed with a whiskery kiss. "Go get back in bed." Her mother had returned three hours later to find her two-year-old yelling lustily from his crib, with her husband and daughter passed out from exhaustion in separate rooms.

Despite his injury, Dad insisted on eating supper at the table with everyone else, his leg propped up on a box. Betty tried to look modestly at her lap as he told the boys, "Today, our Betty found out what she was made of. Didn't so much as flinch when I started stitching. She's as tough as any of us, and none of you is to say any different."

Mom rumpled Betty's hair. "Maybe you'll be a nurse someday, Betty, and help lots of men like your dad before you get married."

Despite her admirably strong stomach, Betty did not end up becoming a nurse. To name but a few of the jobs she's had since she left school at thirteen, she has broken horses, painted houses and driven a delivery truck. She has not helped lots of men. She has only helped herself, squirreling away every spare penny so she can buy her own house someday. Betty knows - has known all her life - that she'll never, ever have a man to buy it for her.

Betty did not get married either, even though she's twenty this year and almost every girl Betty knows has a steady boyfriend at the very least. Instead, she spent this past year sleeping with Ruth Morgan, up until this past Saturday, when Ruth Morgan became Ruth Wallace and said she couldn't see Betty ever again. Betty wasn't in love with her or anything. She was going to end it anyway, there was no way she was going to continue carrying on with a married woman. If you don't have self-respect, what do you have?

Still, she can't pretend it didn't sting, having Ruth tell her, "You're sick, Betty, wanting to keep on the way you've been. Real life is men and women, not women together. You'd better see a doctor." She lost her virginity in Ruth's bed, whatever Ruth says about it not counting if it's two girls. They made each other feel so good. They laughed together, too, all tangled up in sheets smelling of sweat and sex and Ruth's lavender perfume. Betty had hoped Ruth would think of her kindly, but apparently that was too much to ask. If you can do it with a man without throwing up, you get to look down your nose at the whole damn world. Betty doesn't want a man and she doesn't want kids, so she's got nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of apologising for herself.

Or so everyone says. Dr George is still blathering on about his stupid, _stupid_ pamphlets, talking about how very discreetly all this can be done, and suddenly Betty doesn't feel like apologising to him any more. What does she want his opinion for? He's a snob and Betty hates snobs. She thinks back all those years ago, thinks of that little girl she used to be, who didn't turn away when she saw her dad push a needle through his own flesh.

She looks at Dr George as hard as he looked at her when she squirmed under his gaze. He's too busy being enchanted with his own cleverness to notice her eyes burning him. Scornfully, Betty thinks, _I bet the first time you saw a gash that big, you fainted dead away into a puddle of your own piss. What the hell am I doing, dancing for your approval? You're nothing to me._

"Doc," she finds herself blurting. Finally, he looks up at her. She smiles coldly. When she speaks, her voice drips with sarcasm. "Riddle me this: how am I ever gonna be able to show my face at a family reunion again, if I go to some asylum for a six-month rest? Even if I show up in ruffles and taffeta with a beau on my arm, the way Mom's always wanted, I'd be laughed right out of the family. They might wish I'd act like a lady, but they'd never stand for me doing anything as sissy as that."

"This is not really the time for you to make jokes, Miss Munro. This is a time for us to take action."

"Finally, we agree on something!" Her voice rises, despite her desire to stay icy and unmoved.

"I understand that you're frightened. This is a lot to take in, but becoming hysterical will not help matters." His voice is so soothing, his tone so understanding. It is a Herculean effort not to launch herself across the desk and clock him one.

"I'm not hysterical, Dr George. I'm very calm."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it." Dr George clears his throat. "Now, I can organise for some gentlemen from the hospital to pick you up within the hour. We can send word to your parents easily enough. That is..." He eyes her. "... provided you've written the correct details on your form?"

For the first time, Betty feels well and truly frightened. She thought she was afraid before, but that wasn't fear. That was shame at being an embarrassment to her family, guilt at sinning over and over with Ruth, confusion that someone could coax her body to the heights of ecstasy one day and tell her it didn't count the next. Now, she knows what's truly at stake. They could drag her off, lock her up and throw away the key. Who would speak up for her? Not Ruth, that's for damn sure. Not her family, either, if they were to find out what she did - what she is.

_If they try to keep me here, or try to make me leave with them, so help me, I'll kill 'em all. They've got no right to me, no right at all. It's my life and I'll ruin it however I want._ She thinks it with a tremendous clarity, and it gives her strength. Betty rises serenely from her chair and turns to go.

"What are you doing?" Dr George asks, as if it wasn't obvious.

She turns back, so abruptly the skirts of her dress murmur. Perhaps she used a bit too much starch. She so wanted to make a good impression. "You know what? Thanks, but no thanks. I've never had a day's illness. My family doesn't hold with that kind of nonsense. We don't believe in rests, or doctors. I sure as hell don't believe in you."

It's funny how you can march with such seeming purpose, and yet be completely dazed. She's aware of striding out of Dr George's surgery (without paying her bill), but the next thing she knows, she's halfway across town, breathing hard and limping a little. If he shouted after her, she didn't hear. Her ears are filled with a roaring sound.

What is she to do now? She saw the doctor, he gave his opinion, and she all but spat at him. She has resigned herself to a lifetime of being told she's sick by women whose beds she's shared. Betty sees her life stretching out in front of her, a whole long string of Ruth Wallaces sneering at her from the secure, lofty position a good marriage affords them.

But he thought she was insane. Betty thinks the word _insane_ over and over, and it helps her feel indignant rather than terrified. Everything he said about her was wrong. She has never been abused by her brothers, she's not in the least high-strung, and she is not insane.

Still, underneath it all is a voice protesting, growing steadily louder. _What am I gonna do now? What the hell am I gonna do?_ She can't drown it out. She doesn't want to. It's making a legitimate point.

Betty knows she's got to go and take tea with Great-Aunt Evelyn before she negotiates buses and trains and an hour's walk back to her family's farm, by which point it will be dark. Betty knows where she's got to be, but at the same time, she thinks numbly that she has no idea where she's going.


End file.
